Devices Clevohead's PS3 Button Box

Going through my inbox on here, I came across a conversation I was having with Bruce regard Derek Spreare's wheel adaptors (which Bruce ordered one for his T500rs), and he was asking me about Derek's button boxes to use on the PS3, I explained to Bruce that the boxes were for PC based games, and that he/we could make one from a PS3 controller, and a little ingenuity. So this will be a build log documenting collection of components, assembly, and testing.

So the end goal, something along these lines:

With a basic controller, I will have (I hope) 17 buttons in total, including PS, start, select, R3, and L3.



I went into my local non-descript chain store that is in the field of gaming and picked up a pre-owned Spartan brand Bluetooth PS3 controller for $6.

I plan on keeping the battery pack in it, for a backup, I will be removing the board from the housing, removing the rumble packs as they will not be needed. so basically I will be using the circuit board from the controller as a base and interface to the PS3 to wire approx 17 buttons into, and mount and label it all in a box (hopefully keeping it looking half decent)

So let's see how we go, shall we?

So just opened it up to see what I had to work with, and...



Everything is pretty clearly labelled, I should be able to de-solder the majority of factory buttons, and solder in jumper wires, I did read some where that PS3 controllers run 2 x earth circuits and if you bridge them they start playing up, so I will need to be conscious of that.

The battery pack isn't pictured here, it is mounted in the other half of the case, and plugs into the white socket on the board seen next to the reset button. Easily transferred to the new housing.

I have put it back together in the mean time until, I have collected the rest of the parts.

Now to start some ebay shopping.

Oh, and another cool thing I thought of the other night, is I might even make the R2 a missile switch, and then be able to use it as a cruise control on those long Daytona races at about the 1hr mark

Quick update, ordered some of these:

Some of these:

Some of these:

Some of these:

And a bunch of these:


Ordered them all the other week, just waiting on them to come in, just a few other little bits to grab, switches, and jumper wires, then the mad scientist stuff begins

Thats an awesome idea Clevo, looking forward to the finished product. I love electronic projects

My buttons have come in, I also purchased a jumper wire pack from Jaycar:

Now just to get some time and start pre-soldering all the buttons with their wires. And then start trying to link them all to the controller board.

will it be a simple plug and play when finished clevo ? My brain isnt wired the right way to understand how that all works !

It will be plug and play, mappable in the setting on GT6, also will be bluetooth as a normal controller, the battery pack will enable it to be used wireless if needed will be allocated as controller 1 so it can be used during racing with the wheel.

Sounds very flash mate. Excuse my ignorance, would it work with PS4 ?

Don't think so, I would need a third party PS4 controller to make one for that, and as far as I know they aren't available yet, cause I ain't pulling apart an $80+ controller to try

I have pulled the controller down and all my buttons, box, and cable turned up, and that was as far as I got I will have to have a go and let you know how it works out.

After a bit of play with this recently, the soldering of such fine connections, and no indication on the circuit board of the controller for what is positive and neutral for the button presses I have abandoned the PS3 controller versions.

Now that does not mean that all is lost.

With the recent PCARS patch it has introduced USB Keyboard support, and this has been proven to work with USB Numpads like this:



So now I am researching wiring button matrix's, and am going to grab one of these over the weekend and open her up. From what I have seen on the interwebs the control board has decent sized terminals to solder onto.

The project will now be a PS4 PCARS Button Box, I think this could be a real goer.

I have been trialing it too. Just remembering all the assignments can be hard. Hence why I think a box that can be labelled is going to be cool.

So you can assign buttons to the keyboard? What about a Bluetooth keyboard? (Thread hijack). I would use that now until clevo goes into mass production with the button box.